With the advent of minimally invasive procedures in all fields of surgery, the importance of new surgical tools to help surgeons has become all more critical. One such device is an anastomosis visualization device. Anastomosis is a surgical procedure including attaching one blood vessel to another. An anastomosis visualization device is updated to clear fluids and help the surgeon see or visualize a suturing site better. Blood in arteries can spew out from the anastomosis site during surgery, which in turn reduces visualization for the surgeon. Spewing of blood and other bodily fluids can occur, for instance, during a coronary bypass procedure whereby a blood vessel is attached to the coronaries, which may occur while the heart is beating or arrested. During anastomosis, an incision is made in the coronary artery, and then a blood vessel is attached by suturing the blood vessel around the incision.
There are some products available on the market to enhance visualization. These products are primarily designed to blow carbon dioxide gas on the anastomosis site, this gas clearing the blood from the site as soon as it oozes out of the artery. However, it has been found that simply blowing dry carbon dioxide actually dries up the surface of the heart and the site, which is undesired. To address this shortcoming, some devices available on the market are designed to moisten the gas. One such device is described in Salerno U.S. Pat. No. 5,336,170. This device has two inlets, one for receiving gas, and the other for receiving a liquid such as saline solution. This particular device has a tip, whereby saline solution is permitted to drip inside the tip. The saline solution mixes with the gas to provide a moistened gas. One of the drawbacks of the Salerno device is that when the flow of gas is increased, the gas pressure in the tip is higher than the pressure inside the source saline bag. In this situation, the gas actually forces itself into the saline bag. To avoid this drawback and to make sure the saline is actually flowing into the gas stream, the surgical staff typically has to use a pressure cuff on the saline bag to keep the pressure inside the bag to be higher than that of the gas forcing itself into the bag. Another problem with the Salerno device is that the saline drips from the tip. Dripping at the tip of this device occurs primarily because all of the saline dripping into the gas stream is not moisturizing. This dripping can be a nuisance to the surgeon during an anastomosis procedure.
There is desired an improved visualization and moisturizing device which provides an improved moistened gas flow without requiring a pressure cuff on the saline bag, and which does not create dripping at the tip.